Bell wrote a book about a victory. He envisions an eternity in which all sin is forgiven, all wrongs are righted, and love wins. He is absolutely right. Love will win because God will win. God will win because he is God, not because he is love. His love and justice work together to produce a heaven and earth without evil. Our participation in that victory is not a given. Some will not make it. That is what it ultimately means to be lost. In the end, God wins. Reader, where do you stand before God? Don’t take his patience for granted.

Whatever its appeal, the annihilationist position contains substantive problems. One is the biblical assertions that the wicked will suffer an “eternal” fate. Annihilationists argue that the word eternal refers to the permanence of the results of judgment and not to the duration of the act of punishment.